Sunday, January 15, 2012

guacamole, a painful endeavor.

Onions,
I hate that my guacamole just doesn’t taste nearly as delicious when I don’t add onions, I just hate chopping them.

Every time I chop one I cry like some 13 year old girl who just finished watching 'the notebook' for the very first time, and I hate it. You’d think by now scientists would have created an onion that doesn’t make you cry, after all there are apples in my grocery store that taste like grapes. yes the almighty grapple... so why can’t you scientists huh?, to busy trying to cure cancer is that it, oh wait........hmm well okay you keep doing that but still help a sister out!...I’m sure it’s possible, let’s try a little harder okay.

So why DO onions make you cry. Here’s a scientific explanation word for word from a science-y government website.

“Onions produce the chemical irritant known as syn-propanethial-S-oxide. It stimulates the eyes' lachrymal glands so they release tears. Scientists used to blame the enzyme allinase for the instability of substances in a cut onion. Recent studies from Japan, however, proved that lachrymatory-factor synthase, (a previously undiscovered enzyme) is the culprit (Imani et al, 2002).

The process goes as follows:

Lachrymatory-factor synthase is released into the air when we cut an onion.

The synthase enzyme converts the sulfoxides (amino acids) of the onion into sulfenic acid.

Okay so lets simplify in commoner everyday English, onions have a gas in them that is suppose to protect them frompredators, when you kill the onion aka ‘chopping’ it, its like omg someone is trying to murder me and it protects itself by releasing a gas to thwart its enemy aka ‘me’… I always win though, but not without a fight, okay, okay so maybe that’s NOT the literal non-science-y translation, that’s what it feels like sometimes though.

So there you have it, from grapples to murder. Onions, our kitchen foe.